Below is "The Levee Song."

Does anyone know anything more about it, more verses, history, etc.? It sounds as if it stemmed from the late minstrel era and got merged with "I've Been Workin' on the Railroad" in or before the Carmina Princetonia version quoted above.

The other possibility, of course, is that it began as a piece of "I've Been Workin' on the Railroad" and split off from there.

I had forgotten I'd heard the song in childhood until I ran across it. I remember it sung by performers at the only minstrel show I ever saw, held by the local Lion's Club (or some such organization) in (I think) Sellersville, Bucks County, PA, in the mid-1940s. When I found it again it was like a lost echo.

LEVEE SONG
^^
From the 1948 edition of Dick and Beth Best's IOCA Song Fest, p 78.
The Bests (or, perhaps, the original compilers, Will Brown and Gerry Richmond in (apparently) the late 1930s, give no source for the song and no other information.

Oh, I was born in Mobile town, a-workin' on the levee,
All day I roll de cotton down, a-workin' on the levee.

I used to have a dawg named Bill, a-workin' on the levee
He ran away, but I'm here still, a-workin' etc.

Dat li'l ol' dawg set up an' beg ...
Till I done give him a chicken leg ...

I always sing de Levee song ...
It makes de day not half so long ...

I once did know a girl named Grace ...
She brung me to dis sad disgrace ...